A race doomed and cursed to be forever and ever a part of the white race's doom and curse for its sins. Remember that. His doom and his curse. Forever and ever. Mine. Your mother's. Yours, even though you are a child. Being brought up this way taught Joanna to see blacks as objects. "I had seen and known negroes since I could remember. I just looked at them as I did at rain, or furniture, or food or sleep." With time, race and sex interrelated. Joanna during one of her "wild throes of nymphomania" would call "Negro!" "Negro!" "Negro!"

Likewise in the community sexism and racism go together. Woman and "Negro" are seen as one. The worst thing is the "womanshenegro." Joanna is just as bad. She fights her feminine identity in the sex scenes, guilty with the taboo of both lust and race.

Added to this is the...

Through his works, he shows how they are oppressed yet continue to struggle for their identity.
Jean Toomer's women characters also feel alienated from their society. Fern, with a Semitic beauty and racially mixed is also affected by her sexual and racial identity. Because of her looks, she is most frequently considered an object of desire by men, rather than a woman with intelligence and feelings. Men took one look at her and were memorized:

Face flowed into her eyes...The soft suggestion of down slightly darkened, like the shadow of a bird's